Using HALionOne for multiple MIDI tracks?

Searching the PDF docs as well as this forum didn’t shed any light for me, so here goes…

With one instance of HALionOne in the Virtual Instrument Rack, I tried to assign instruments “inside” it to more than one MIDI track. What happened was all the MIDI tracks assigned to it would play only the most recently-assigned instrument.

Do I need to load a separate instance of HALionOne into the Instrument Rack for each MIDI channel I want to use it? If not, how do I set it up so the different tracks going into the one instance are distinct? Each MIDI track has its own channel, and I can set this up with one instance of SampleTank with no problem; it’s only HALionOne that’s giving me trouble. I can’t seem to find any controls similar to SampleTank’s that lets me assign different channels to different instruments.

Thanks in advance!

There are multi-timberal instruments (like HSO or Kontakt) that have usually 8 different slots for instruments and can be assigned a different MIDI channel per sound, and there are those that can only play one sound and are better used as instrument tracks. Like Massive, Prologue, and Halion One.

(Note this is from memory, I pretty much never use it since I have Kontakt.)

Just load up multiple instrument tracks of it instead of using the rack.

Thanks. I was trying to avoid Instrument Tracks for imported MIDI files due to advice I got from the last thread I started here. SampleTank is my favorite at the moment, and I have Kontakt too, but I’m just starting out and don’t have that many instruments for them. I was trying to leverage the hundreds that came with Cubase, and that seems to mean I’m stuck using HALionOne.

Well, i didn’t see the other thread (and I’m too lazy to search for it :$), but I don’t see why you can’t import the MIDI and just drag/drop to instrument tracks. Or you could use the rack but just understand that you need many instances of Halion One.

There really isn’t a better or worse way to make a VSTi. Some companies make single-timbreVSTis and some make multi. I actually find the multitimberal instruments to be more cumbersome and almost always use instrument tracks even with Kontakt. There really isn’t that much overhead in having another instance of the VSTi loaded.

I own all of the Spectrasonics instruments (each one supports 8 parts) and that’s the one exception. But they are so good that I always have all 3 in every project and have defined a template with the 8outs all active and mapped to 8 different MIDI channels that I put in special folders so they don’t clutter my project.

Okay, thanks; I’ll give it a go. Appreciate the advice! :sunglasses:

The advice you received was based on the fact that you were importing MIDI files with multi channel data in it.

I personally never use instrument tracks. But some people like them. The only thing they really do is hide some of the complexity of having an instrument (VSTi) audio track(s) and separate MIDI track(s) driving the VSTi.

You are now hitting new information that was actually explained a bit in the previous thread. Some instruments, probably most, are NOT multi-timbrel (play more than one sound).

There is an explanation of the limitations of the Instrument Track in the operations manual. It is short and concise. I suggest you read it about 400 times until you completely understand what it is saying. Because, it will make a lot of the other capabilities of the VSTi Rack and MIDI tracks clearer.

The big advantage to the instruments in the rack…

  1. multiple audio outs up to like 64 channels IIRC
  2. Multiple MIDI tracks can be assigned to the same VSTi Rack instance
  3. MIDI tracks can send messages to the VSTi at the Port(Any) level or the Port(Channel) level.

Instrument tracks
1)2 channels of audio only
2)Incoming MIDI is at the Port(Any) level only
3)Allows the creation of track templates

Really the Instrument track is just a stripped down interface to the Rack/MIDI track relationship.

Well, actually, this is the exact same situation: a multi-track MIDI import. I want to use some instruments that I don’t happen to have in some of the add-on VSTs I have, so am exploring what HALionOne can do.

Really, I “got” the limitations and benefits of the rack-vs-instrument methods, but none of that discussion in the manual addressed my specific question: can HALionOne support the rack method with one instance? The answer turned out to be, “no” and I’m okay with that. You can’t learn without asking questions. :ugeek:

As to my desire to follow your advice and try to avoid Instrument Tracks, again this is the same situation as covered in the other thread, and until I learned of this limitation in HALionOne there was no compelling reason to depart from said advice. I presume that the number of instances of H you load into the rack will have impact on memory consumption so, if there were a way to avoid multiples, I was game to learn how to do it.

PS: said advice was awesome and gratefully received, as will be any further such gifts. :sunglasses:

Great,

And about advice … it was mostly my advice to not use the instrument tracks. So, take it with a grain of salt. A lot of people think they are the greatest thing since sliced bread.

It’s just important to get the limitations. So, if you have that figured out now. Awesome.

Understood. Many thanks again!